Episode #2: The Lady in White, pt.1
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hd_level_twoEpisode number and title: 2 – The Lady in White
Episode writer:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
incandescent
Episode editor(s):eustacia_vye28, llaeyro and wemyss
Warnings/content: *horror imagery, UST, minor character death*
Episode summary: Harry receives a mysterious (and quite possibly cursed) note, and decides that this, like all good mysteries, must be investigated. Preferably with the help of one Draco Malfoy.
Tuesday, August 9, 2006
9:11am
The white parchment unfolds like a rose blooming in Harry’s hands, quickens like stop-motion movies of plants and then falls still, the spell that animated it spent.
The thorns lie within:
Case No. 08297. The Fifth Room, it reads.
Harry draws out his wand. “Reveal your secrets,” he says, imbuing his voice with the burr of magic. The spell is weak and nonspecific, but it should reveal something about whoever set the spell on the note without triggering any latent spells.
The magic tells him nothing. Harry looks up to find himself scowling and quickly corrects his face as Dawlish’s secretary glares back at him from the doorway of the Ministry of Magic’s Division for the Investigation of Cold Cases (DICC).
“Sorry, Parvati,” he says, smiling. “Are you sure you don’t know who gave you this note?”
She shrugs, dark hair brushing her shoulders. “Yeah. It was on my desk when I got in.”
Harry folds the note back down to its smallest size and looks over the outside of the parchment. He whispers a spell that sends it floating over the desktop between them. “It doesn’t have my name on it. Why did you give it to me?”
“It doesn’t?” Parvati walks forward and leans over his desk, peering at the parchment. Her robes are low and give Harry a clear view of her chest, though her breasts are small enough that there isn’t much to see. He tugs his gaze away just as her wide-set brown eyes look up. “I could have sworn it had your name on it. I’m sorry. I just knew it was for you as soon as I picked it up.” She reaches out. “I’ll take it back. The Head must know who it’s for.”
If Dawlish takes the note, Harry will never get it back. He pulls the paper close to his chest, and the parchment’s corner pricks at his throat. “That’s alright, Parvati,” he says. “If you felt the note was for me, you were probably right. I’ll look into it.”
Parvati draws back, wand in her hand. “Now that I think about it, Harry, I think it was spelled so that I’d give it to you. It’s probably cursed.” Her tone is calm, but the crease between her brows shows how concerned she is.
Harry nods and leans back in his chair. The seat creaks. “Possibly,” he says. “Knowing my luck, it’ll be a nasty curse, won’t it?” His smile is crooked.
Parvati sighs and sends him an exasperated look. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” she says, letting her wand fall to her side. “It’s been years. Can’t you just let it go?” She glances at the note once more, and her wand twitches as if she wants to summon the parchment from his grasp.
“Never,” he says. “I always need a new mystery.”
She laughs. “I hope you don’t end up in St. Mungos,” she says, half turning towards the door, and Harry almost laughs with her. That’s turning out to be a far too regular occurrence as well.
He smiles and nods. “Me too.”
Once Parvati has gone, though, the potential danger enclosed within the white parchment pinched between two fingers becomes more apparent. He lays the note carefully down on his desk and glances over to Malfoy’s.
It’s nearly bare, and what few supplies are set upon it are neatly organized and laid out at precise angles relative to the desk’s edges. Harry isn’t remotely surprised at Malfoy’s neatness, especially as he hardly uses the desk at all. He confines his experiments – and the mess that comes with them – to the back room of the offices that they share. Right now, Malfoy isn’t even in.
Harry would be interested to see what Malfoy makes of his little note. He could certainly spend another hour or more running tests on the note to find hidden spells, or even take the note across the Ministry and attempt to drag Hermione away from of her ceaseless research to take a look at it.
But asking Malfoy to cast a few spells will likely be quicker and more productive. Even if it means taking the note to Malfoy’s flat.
Harry stands suddenly and the chair screeches against the floor. He flicks his wand at the note and it flies up into the air, fluttering into his grasp as he moves. He slips between the two desks and walks out, hearing the office door lock itself behind him.
The hall outside the DICC is quiet, as usual, but just around the corner are the Head Auror’s office, and the buzz of noise that drifts down the corridor towards Harry draws him in, until he finds himself looking round the corner slowly and carefully.
The space outside the closed door to Dawlish’s office is packed, Ministry personnel taking up every bit of space; some obviously lingering in the hopes of getting in a quick word with the Head, and others just walking through, grumbling under their breath as they brush past unmoving shoulders. Overhead, paper aeroplanes swoop and soar with memos inscribed on their backs. Although Harry isn’t tall, he has to duck to avoid one as it veers through the space where his head was a second before.
Harry slides the parchment into the pocket inside his robes for safekeeping.
A door down the hall flies open and Ron strides through, face flushed almost as red as his hair. He stops dead as he nearly runs into the crowd. Harry watches, amused, as Ron glances around, his face quickly shifting from exasperation to happiness as he spots Harry and straightens.
He waves from across the room. “Can I get in?” he calls, gaze darting past to try and look in to the Head’s office.
“Not in,” Harry mouths, grimacing. Dawlish is almost never in the office so early in the day. They should all know that he thinks, glancing towards the other witches and wizards. A few trail gazes over him and at least one such sticks. He avoids their looks and works his way over to Ron.
“Wish I could keep that kind of schedule,” Ron mutters under his breath as Harry steps next to him. He steps out of the doorway and leans against the wall. “I’ve got to run this by him,” he says, waving a sheaf of parchments at Harry. He sees the glint of a Ministry seal, but little else.
“What are they?” Harry asks. The sheer variety of forms at the Ministry of Magic is staggering. Sorting through the scope of them had driven Hermione to exhaustion, and she’d once fallen asleep with her head laid on a stack of Modern Miscellany & Magical Machinery Registration (19A) forms.
“Warrants,” Ron says with dark relish in his voice. “There’s been a kidnapping.”
Harry turns, staring. “Who? What happened?” Since the War, kidnappings have been rare and whenever one is reported, it causes a stir in the entire Auror Department.
“You’re not on the case, so I can’t say, you know that.” Ron holds his smile back for a moment before bursting into a grin. “Okay, so listen to this: his name is Jacob Wilfing and he went out last—”
“Weasley!”
Ron jumps, nearly leaping away from the wall. Senior Auror Savage is standing in the doorway, all six feet of him looming with rank and superiority despite the rumpled state of his brown hair. He looks down his long nose at Ron and blinks his pale eyes slowly.
“Chatting, are we? Where are the warrants I need?” He pauses and glances down, letting his gaze linger. “Ah. Still in your hand, I see.”
“Dawlish isn’t in,” Ron fairly shouts. His flush climbs up into his hairline. “Head Auror Dawlish, I mean. Sir.”
Harry eyes his best friend. Savage has a serious reputation for being terrifying, and even as a trainee he and Ron had heard tales about how harsh he could be with his subordinates. They’d also heard that he was one of the best Aurors working in the Ministry and that he had an almost ninety-seven percent arrest rate. Harry doubts any of that has changed in the years since, but he and Ron have so much more experience; it’s mad that Ron’s still scared of the man, even now.
“Well.” Savage’s thin lips purse and Harry wonders, for a second, which is the man in charge: Dawlish or Savage. “We’ve had a new development. The warrants will have to wait. Meet me by the Floo.”
Ron nods. “Yes, sir,” he says, and glances at Harry apologetically. “Later,” he hisses, then shoves the parchments into his robes and strides out the door.
Savage lets him go and nods at Harry. “Auror,” he says, and sweeps out of the room.
Desire seethes in Harry. He wants to be working on this kidnapping. He misses the thrill of knowing that what he’s doing might make the difference between life and death; that there’s someone depending on the facts he’s chasing down. Cold cases bring their own rewards, but they’re undoubtedly less urgent. Maybe he could just head up, take the lift from Level Two towards the surface and catch Ron and Savage at the Floo. He wouldn’t even need to tell them he was there, simply listen carefully and ride the tails of their robes to the other side, spinning out and into the kidnapping along with them.
His heart pounds at the thought, but Harry knows it’s unrealistic. He’s already the chief of his own division; he should be happy with that.
He sighs and reaches into his robes, brushing his fingers against the note.
Parvati ‘just knew’ it was meant for him. There had to be a spell on it to send it his way, and it must be a particularly subtle and well-crafted one – Harry can’t feel the telltale charge of magic under his fingertips, and Parvati didn’t mention feeling anything either.
He pulls it out and unfolds it himself. The handwriting is spindly and slim - letters spiked and looped and written by a hand which had fairly skimmed the nib of its quill over the parchment and barely pressed at all, leaving some letters half unfinished.
Is it really cursed? He doesn’t feel any different yet, though the symptoms could be timed, or as subtle as the identification spell that must have been cast on it. It could be a simple note, but knowing Harry’s luck, what are the chances of that?
He’ll have to have it checked out, just to be sure it’s safe.
He shoves the note away and heads for the Floo. He has some investigating of his own to do.
//
9:54am
“Malfoy!”
Harry pounds at the door and tries to peer through the glass of the peephole.
“What?” Malfoy calls after a moment, from what sounds like right next to the other side of the door, and Harry smothers the urge to jump in surprise.
“It’s Harry Potter! Let me in, all right?”
The wards on Malfoy’s London flat are tight. Harry had tried to Floo in and been shunted three streets over to a crowded shop in Diagon Alley. Staggering through the startled shoppers and brushing ash from his robes had brought back memories of being twelve again, which hadn’t put him in a particularly good mood when he’d tried to Apparate in and found himself dumped on the doormat, bounced off the wards with his fingers and wrists and knees and toes feeling only tenuously attached.
“Malfoy, let me in!” he snaps, patience at its breaking point.
“Another case already?” Malfoy calls. “Because after last time, I’m not sure—”
“Yeah,” Harry says quickly. “New case. Very important. It’s a kidnapping, and—”
Malfoy yanks the door open and Harry, who’d been leaning against it, nearly falls inside.
“Thanks,” he says, turning his stumble into a step and walking in.
The windows of Malfoy’s flat are flung open to the city, and the sound of traffic floods in, slipping between the fluttering curtains. Harry strips his robes off as soon as he steps through the door and moves to roll up his shirtsleeves, but can’t find a place to lay his robe down. It’s close in here, crowded with summer heat and books.
There are books everywhere; crowded on the seats of Victorian-style armchairs, stacked underneath the mid-century coffee table, and overflowing from what appear to be several Ikea bookshelves. Books are lying opened beside crumb-covered plates and standing upright in the middle of the floor. Harry pauses and stoops, picking one up, glancing at the spine: Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration.
Ah. He gingerly puts the book down.
“Would you like to reorganise?” Malfoy asks, closing the front door and snapping the lock shut with a flick of his wand.
His neatly trimmed hair is darker than usual, touched with sweat, and there’s a flush on his cheeks. The sleeves of his white button-down are rolled with neatly pressed folds to his elbows and the top two buttons of his collar are undone. His trousers appear to be a light linen, with creases gathered at the hips from moving around. He looks harried, and Harry wonders what he’s interrupted. His thoughts flash back to that night in the bar, Malfoy’s hands all over Benjy Williams, his smile brilliant enough to catch Harry’s attention across the crowded room.
“You wanted me to look at a case?” Malfoy prompts, his tone insinuating that Harry must have forgotten his purpose in popping round.
Harry jolts and nods. “Not quite.” He pulls the note from his robes and holds it out. “This came to me this morning. I want to know if it’s cursed.”
Malfoy throws up his hands. “I’m not your errand boy, Potter. Check it yourself.”
“I’ve tried,” Harry says “Can’t find anything. And since you’re the Unspeakable, I figured I’d ask you to take a look.”
Malfoy laughs. “I haven’t heard much asking lately.”
Harry’s fingers clench around the note. “Will you take a look at this for me?” He pauses, and when Malfoy opens his mouth to say no, adds, “Please, Draco?”
Malfoy startles and flushes, pink rising to his cheeks. “Fine,” he snaps, and flicks his wand at the note. It drags itself from Harry’s grasp with a little flutter and rises up.
Harry steps back to let Malfoy work. He looks to one of the armchairs, but the books that have claimed it as their home don’t seem inclined to shift, so he leaves them be. He watches Malfoy as he works on the note, lips barely parted to let spells slip through them, the tip of his slim wand glowing with the constant flow of magic, and the space around the note flashing with colour as each spell scribes its coded answers in the air for Malfoy to read.
Finally, he falls silent, and the note turns white once more. Malfoy stretches out his hand and the note falls into it.
“It’s safe,” he says. “Except for the personalised directional spell – which is a handy piece of work – it’s free of magic.”
Harry nods and reaches out to take it back. “Thanks,” he says. “Good to know.” There is a heaviness within him that suggests that he had actually wished, somewhere buried deep, that it had been cursed, and that he would have to deal with everything that came along with that.
Malfoy pulls the note back. “Wait, wait,” he says. “I haven’t had a chance to take a look.” He unfolds the note, long fingers picking carefully at the folds, until it opens.
He reads the words quickly and then looks up, honest confusion in his eyes. “What case is this referring to? Do you think it refers to the Fifth Records Room in the Ministry?”
Harry shrugs. “Don’t know. I came straight to you. I figured I would check it out if I was still breathing by the time you’d checked for curses.” He pauses, then dares a smile. “Would you like to find out?”
Malfoy blinks at him, incredulous. “Potter, are you asking me out?” After a pause so short that, afterwards, Harry isn’t even sure he heard it, he adds, “On another case?”
Harry laughs, letting tension fall from his shoulders. “Yeah, something like that. What do you say?”
As he looks out the window, Malfoy’s hands fold the note back up again. “Okay,” he says. “It isn’t as if I have anything better to do today.” He pushes the note into Harry’s hand and summons his cloak, catching it neatly out of the air.
Harry pulls his own robes on as Malfoy rolls his shirtsleeves down and slips his robe on. He tucks the note safely away and holds out his arm.
“Shall we?” he asks.
Malfoy rolls his eyes. “When you’re ready, Potter.”
With an easy twist, Harry Apparates them to the Ministry.
//
10:20am
Black for murder, red for rape, purple for assault. Gold for theft and silver for treason. Blue for disappearances and kidnappings. Orange stripes to signify the use of magic. The darker the colour, the more severe the crime. The Records Rooms of the Ministry of Magic are more thoroughly organized than even Hermione could accomplish, given five years and an army of free elves, and Harry often wonders what manner of madman first conceived the system that currently fills the Rooms.
The First Room contains files for open cases. Rooms Two, Three, and Four contain closed cases. The Fifth Room – the last Room – holds cold cases. It reaches far back into the Ministry, its extended space far deeper than that of any of the other Rooms. Shelves of coloured file-jackets and boxes scroll on and on until they’re swallowed by the darkness where the light doesn’t reach.
Harry steps into the room and glances down at the note once more.
Case No. 08297. The Fifth Room.
He’s in the Fifth Room. Almost there.
Malfoy steps in behind him, head craned back to stare at the straining shelves above them. “Merlin,” he whispers. “This is going to take ages.”
There’s something about the Records Room that demands silence, as if all the parchment and crimes contained within them are another species of being, one that likes darkness and silence, and devours nothing more than the pleasant thoughts of those that dare to take a file down and read it. Little paper Dementors.
The thought makes Harry smile despite himself.
“We’re looking for oh-eight-two-nine-seven,” he whispers to Malfoy, stepping forward. “I think they start with zero on that end.” He points down the left-hand shelves. Malfoy eyes the stacks.
“You’d best be right,” Malfoy says, volume rising, then winces and clamps his lips shut.
Harry offers him a half-smile and points down one of the nearby aisles. Malfoy nods and raises his wand. The tip lights as he disappears, bobbing luminescence to show where he’s gone, and Harry heads for another aisle.
Lumos proves to be a poor way to search for a file when the shelves holding said files rise seven levels high, far above Harry’s head, and are labelled with numbers too small to read even up close. Harry squints at the first and discovers that, by some luck, he’s found the oh-eight-thousands.
He keeps walking, checking the numbers periodically, and when he feels he’s gotten close enough, tries to summon the file from the shelves above.
File 08297 is a slim, light blue folder containing just a few sheets of paper. It flutters downward off its shelf, falling with dubious coordination until Harry can snatch it out of the air. He turns to go after Malfoy, then pauses. The note was meant for him, after all. Maybe he should take a look first.
He crouches, tucking his lit wand behind his ear.
Harry stares at the file for a moment. It’s so thin. He lets his hand rest on top of it.
He opens the cover and reads the first few lines.
Case No. 08297
Disappearance -- Helena Malfoy, Age 18
Opened Nov. 8th, 1981 – Closed June 17th, 1988 (Unsolved)
00592A082FPW
Well, shit. He closes the folder and surges to his feet, striding down the aisle and catching his wand as it nearly slips from behind his ear. He shoves the folder under his arm and keeps moving.
“Malfoy!” he hisses as loud as he dares, rounding the corner.
Malfoy’s hair gleams in the dim light, far down the aisle. Cursing, Harry heads for him.
“Malfoy!” he hisses again, and this time Malfoy turns.
“Did you find it?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Harry says, and grabs him. “We have to go.”
Malfoy snaps immediately to alertness at Harry’s tone. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Harry says. “Well, something, but nothing urgent.”
“So why are you dragging me out?” Malfoy’s tone rises wildly, but Harry doesn’t let him go. He can feel the pulse in Malfoy’s wrist, and his mind is swirling with the name Helena Malfoy, written in official Ministry script.
They reach the door of the Fifth Room and Harry shoves it open. As soon as they’re out, he glances up and down the deserted hallway and pulls Malfoy close, Disapparating.
Malfoy’s wards dump them on the doormat again.
“Fuck!” Harry curses under his breath.
Malfoy shoves him off. “Honestly,” he hisses, and opens the door.
When they’re both inside, Malfoy locks the door with both deadbolt and spell.
“All right,” he says, whirling on Harry, “what happened?”
Harry grimaces and runs his hand through his hair.
“Nothing. Really. We just couldn’t… Look, I thought it would be better to go through this in private.” He holds out 08297.
Malfoy’s brow furrows as he takes the pale blue file.
“Stealing from Records, are we?” He grimaces sourly. “I hope I won’t be implicated along with you.”
Harry laughs, relieved and forgetting, for one instant, the name. “You won’t be. Cross my heart.”
Malfoy sends him a look before turning away and flicking the file open. He freezes, breath stopping in his chest and his entire body stiffening. He turns back to Harry, eyes wide and unusually disarmed.
“Helena Malfoy,” he says wonderingly, tasting the name. “Someone is trying to get to us.”
“You know her, then?” The moment he’d seen the name Malfoy written on that file, he’d known that whoever had sent the note to Harry had known exactly who would be looking into 08297 – who would be foolish enough to take a mysterious file from the Ministry and look into it without Ministry approval. Now it just remains to see what kind of trap this is.
“Know her? She’s…” Malfoy pauses and waves the file, lips pursed. “She’s one of my cousins. I never knew her personally, she was so much older than I. But… I did see her once.” He looks back down to the file. “After she disappeared.”
Harry stills. He forces himself to stop thinking, to just listen to Malfoy for a moment.
“She disappeared in 1981,” Malfoy says, looking down, and Harry isn’t sure if he’s reading from the file or reciting from memory. “The First War was over, or practically so. She walked out of her house to visit friends one evening and never returned.” He stops and Harry can see that the fingers he’s curled loosely around the slim file are trembling.
Harry edges his way around a teetering pile of books and sits on the sofa. Malfoy follows his cue and sits beside him.
“I saw her in 1987,” he says. “Almost seven years after she disappeared. She was beautiful. Her hair wasn’t like mine – it was more golden.” His hand reaches up and then stops in an abortive motion. “We were walking in Diagon Alley. Helena was going the other way, and I knew her immediately. As soon as I saw her, it was as if a shock ran through me. Her portrait was in the Manor and her name is woven into the family tree. She was like a story come to life. I tried to get Father’s attention, but she was gone. Vanished as if she’d never been. Father and Mother didn’t really believe that I’d seen her, but took me to report it anyway. No one believed me. After a while I convinced myself that I’d been mistaken.”
He looks down at the photograph attached to the file. Helena Malfoy is pretty, but not beautiful. She turns to smile up at them from beyond the lens, cheeks pink from the snow swirling around her and a Slytherin scarf twisted tightly around her neck. She laughs, twisting to look at someone behind her, and then turns back to he and Malfoy. The loop begins again, and Harry pulls his gaze away; Wizarding photographs are still far too entrancing to him, even after all these years.
He looks to Malfoy instead. The file has badly unnerved him, shaken the perpetual confidence and ease that Malfoy projects. He wants to tell Malfoy that he didn’t imagine anything, that his memories are real, but he can’t be so trusting, not even now. He has a job to do, whether he’s been assigned the case or simply stumbled upon it.
“Were you mistaken?” he asks.
Malfoy’s eyes flash. “No.” He points at the photograph. “I knew this girl. She’s the woman I saw in Diagon Alley. She’s still alive, or she was then. And she’s still missing.” His voice turns soft at the last words.
Harry isn’t sure he believes Malfoy. It’s not that he thinks Malfoy is lying, but rather that… he knows memories can be flexible. Looking at the photograph, Malfoy seems so sure of Helena Malfoy’s identity, but Harry suspects that half an hour ago he would have been hard-pressed to recall her name.
“What do you think happened to her?” he asks.
Malfoy leans back and fingers the folder. He shakes his head after a moment. “Anything. It’s… not unknown for Malfoys to leave the family, for many reasons. We are not always easy to live with.” His gaze flicks up to Harry and then away.
Harry stands abruptly. “Someone sent that note to me. Someone sent us - sent us - to that file. I want to know why.” He stops as Malfoy looks up at him. “And that means we have to find Helena Malfoy.”
“She’s probably dead,” Malfoy says.
Harry nods. “Perhaps. But there’s a mystery here that I want to get to the bottom of. Something about this doesn’t feel right.” He can’t quite put his finger on it, but from the little that Malfoy has said and the glance Harry has had of the file, he can tell that there is much more to 08297 than it first appeared.
“So we’ll find her,” Malfoy says. His face is tight, eyes wide and staring. His brand of determination is so much more vicious than Harry’s.
Harry nods. “We’ll go back to the beginning. Talk to her family. Revisit everything. I have a feeling that it won’t take long for us to find something.”
Malfoy’s brow rises, amusement breaking through his fixation. “It’s been twenty-five years,” he says. “I think that if there was anything to be found, someone would have already found it.”
“We’ll find something. Trust me,” Harry says. “Just this once.”
That startles Malfoy into a laugh. Sunlight catches on the white of his hair, flashing. He narrows his eyes at Harry. “Trust you?” It sounds like the most unlikely proposition in the history of the world, coming from Malfoy’s lips.
“You’ve done it before,” Harry says, not a little defensively.
“So I have,” Malfoy says, smiling.
//
12:27pm
The wind whips Malfoy’s hair into his eyes and he reaches up to pull it back.
They’re on the last curve of the drive to the Derbyshire home of the Malfoy family – Chrysos Hall, he’s been informed – with sweat on their foreheads and robes thrown over their arms. Late summer is not a good time to be trekking down long drives simply because the edge of the anti-Apparation wards is almost a mile away.
The fact that they’ve gotten this far at all is unusual, so far as Harry’s concerned. He had assumed that the wards around that Malfoy’s family home would be intricate and entrenched, and would require direct permission to pass through. Yet only the Apparation wards are still in place, and he and Malfoy walked straight through the rest as if they were barely there, though they’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the Derbyshire Malfoys at all today.
They’ve just spent nearly two hours tracking down Helena’s parents, the last of the Derbyshire Malfoys. It seems that, almost fifty years ago, Septimus Malfoy had bought an old Muggle home out in the picturesque countryside of the Peak District, and had proceeded to spend several years and millions of galleons having the place stripped of its Muggle heritage and redone in high Wizarding style. It is Unplottable, and to the eyes of Muggles, appears as a ruined hall. This did nothing to make the house easier to locate and Apparate to, and by now, Harry’s patience is stretching thin. He wants to get inside Chrysos Hall and find the Malfoys so that he can begin asking questions.
“I don’t think you should talk,” Malfoy says.
Harry looks at him incredulously. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m an Auror, and—”
“And I’m just the consultant here?” He slides a sour look towards Harry. “The Unspeakable? The only person here certified in Cursebreaking and Wardcracking? I’m the heir to the Wiltshire Malfoys, and the last wizard to have seen Helena alive. I think I’m a bit more qualified to handle this situation.”
Malfoy strides away, leaving Harry to glower after him. He’ll let Malfoy talk, but he’s certainly not going to stay silent. He braces himself and then follows Malfoy, striding up the drive.
Chrysos Hall is enormous. It sits at the top of a steep hill, carved from pale stone and glinting gold filigree, four storeys tall and with hundreds of windows across its front, geometrically planned and precisely aligned. It is elegant and obviously quite old, and Harry is confronted once again with the Malfoy’s wealth. Not that he’d forgotten, but the particular Malfoy he chooses to spend time with does a good job of downplaying the obscene amount of gold he has access to.
The Hall grows only larger as they approach, until its cool shadow falls over them and they’re forced to pull their robes on again. Malfoy fastens the buttons of his waistcoat and straightens, clearly readying himself for a visit with his family. As they approach the front door, Harry straightens his tie.
“State your name,” the doorknocker gravely intones as they come to a halt. Its metal face drips down the door, chinning wagging.
Somehow, all traces of exertion have left Malfoy, and he looks as collected and calm as if he Apparated in just feet away.
“Draco Malfoy,” Malfoy says. And then, as Harry opens his mouth, he adds, “And guest.”
Harry snaps his mouth shut, teeth grinding, and forces a smile. Patience, he reminds himself. The doorknocker’s lined face stills for a moment, then shifts to life once more. “Be welcome,” it says, and the door groans open onto darkness.
They step inside, and the door shuts quietly behind them. The entrance hall is dim. Webs crowd the corners, and the only light comes from windows set high in the walls, which falls to the dusty floor and sends patterns across the bottom of their robes. Harry reaches into his robe for his wand, suddenly uneasy.
“Something is wrong,” Malfoy says, and Harry nods in complete agreement. He brings out his wand and flicks it, sending a scanning spell out.
It sweeps through the room and nearby corridors before returning. “Nothing,” Harry says. “I can’t find any signs of life.”
Malfoy is already chanting his own spell under his breath. It sounds very much like Harry’s own detection spell, but with added clauses to specify something. As he tries to decipher the Latin, Malfoy finishes the spells with a sweep of his wand and Harry feels the magic sweep over him and away, through the myriad rooms of the house.
“Is that your spell?” he asks, as they wait for the results.
Malfoy nods. “I specified that it should search for members of my bloodline. It should tell me if there are any other Malfoys here. But it won’t…” He grimaces and shrugs. “There are certain kinks I haven’t been able to work out yet. I haven’t exactly tested this one extensively.”
The spell returns to Malfoy with a flash at the top of his wand, and he looks down at it sharply. “They’re here,” he says.
“Good,” Harry says, and before Malfoy can delay by running any more diagnostics, he walks towards the wide staircase in the centre of the cavernous entrance hall.
He pauses and turns on his heel. “Up?” he asks, tilting his head toward the stairs.
Back stiff, Malfoy walks over. “The bedrooms will be up there. I’m sure my family won’t be thrilled with the fact that you’re now intruding on their private spaces.”
Harry shrugs. “They should have come down to greet us, then.”
He starts upwards, the sound of his and Malfoy’s heels on the stairs is hollow.
The house is still and quiet. The wood of the staircase groans softly under his weight, and the only other sounds that Harry can make out are the rasp of Malfoy’s robes shifting and the infrasonic hum of magic.
At the top of the staircase, they split up, Malfoy heading down the hall to the left and Harry to the right. Wand out, Harry checks each room, finding a library with books left open on the desk, a sitting room with a dusty teacup and saucer still sitting out, a study that is immaculately clean except for the thick layer of dust over everything, and a bedroom that appears to have been unused for years. The sound of his steps is eerily muffled as he moves through each one.
Halfway down the long hall, the wall changes from a darkly-patterned and faded wallpaper to a thick, draped tapestry. Harry slows to a halt and uses his wand to lift a corner of the heavy fabric. It takes him a moment to realize why it seems so familiar.
It’s a Malfoy family tapestry. Generations of bloodlines are laid out in black and silver embroidery on a panelled green, names writ in small cramped script and connected by a thick grid of lines. This family tree must go back thousands of years.
Harry drops to a crouch, squinting as he looks for a name he recognizes. Many are dark and grayed, the witches and wizards they represented long dead. Down the bottom, some shine, glimmering with a faint light.
There. Draco Malfoy, Lucius and Narcissa; written in the very middle of the tapestry. Off to the side is the name Helena Malfoy, shining and vibrant. Harry reaches out to touch the tapestry, disarmed by the sight.
A flame flares up in front of his face and Harry jumps up, wand snapping up to cast a spell.
But the floating tongue of fire does nothing besides hover, flickering and dancing. Then it gutters and flares up again, and a voice issues from it.
“Potter,” Malfoy says through the communication spell, “come quickly. I’ve found them.” The spell has flattened his voice and turned it hollow, but Harry can still hear the concern in it.
He pulls back from the spell as it fades to a wisp and vanishes. He turns and heads down the hall towards Malfoy, steps quickened. After a moment, Malfoy steps out of a darkened doorway and beckons. Harry begins to run.
“What is it?” he asks, breaths coming harsh in his throat as he stops.
Malfoy scowls. “You’ll see.” He points into the open door of the room he’s just stepped out of with the glowing tip of his wand. “I think we’re a bit late for questions.”
Harry moves inside with his wand out. It appears to be a sitting room, very much like one down the hall, except that this one has a fireplace with ashes in it. A teacup lies on the wooden floor, shattered, and its saucer sits nearby. In the two chairs flanking the fireplace sit two bodies, obviously many years dead. They have rotted to mere bones and skin, though the robes that they once wore remain fairly intact. Yellow hair curls over the collar of one body, and a few strands of shorter grey hair cling to the rotted scalp of the other.
A man and a woman. “Is it Helena?” Harry asks.
Malfoy slides around him and leans close.
“No,” he says. “Do you see their rings?”
Harry peers at the bony hands, draped over the arms of their chairs. Each body has a heavy ring on its left hand, matching in design and engraving.
“Malfoy signet rings,” he says. “Given only through marriage. Helena wasn’t married. These must be her parents.” He pauses. “Septimus and Aurelia Malfoy.”
Harry frowns. “Her parents aren’t supposed to be dead,” he says. “The file lists them as alive.”
He flicks his wand, allowing his Lumos to die, and runs a few diagnostic spells. They bring back no answers, showing only that the Malfoys died a natural death. Yet this looks anything but. How could a prominent Wizarding couple vanish and be left to rot in their own home with no one noticing?
“Natural causes,” he says. “But that seems unlikely.”
“Extremely so,” Malfoy says, and lifts his own wand. He scowls for a long moment. “I might be able to find out more.”
He begins to speak an incantation, drawing out his words so that the Latin blurs together, intonation low and steady. Harry recognizes the sound of an invented spell and draws back slightly, not wanting to interfere in the least in whatever magic Malfoy is crafting.
As the spell continues, the bodies twitch. A soft palette of colour flares under the skin of their cheeks, then blossoms, spreading with a startling swiftness down their necks and under their clothes. Their flesh balloons outward, swelling with life, and their chests rise. They sit still for a moment as Harry stares, and Malfoy continues his magic.
Then they move, rising slowly from their seats. As they stand, their expressions shift from blank to terrified, muscles tightening and twitching with the abject fear they are experiencing.
“What have you—” Harry begins. Behind the risen figures he can see the bodies, still sitting lifeless in their armchairs, unchanged. The magic he sees now is just an illusion.
Septimus and Aurelia Malfoy reach up, clawing with artificially lifelike fingers at something invisible above them. Septimus manages to pull away for a second, pushing back whatever has him in its grasp and stares desperately past Harry, at the doorway. His mouth opens and closes and it looks like he’s shouting something.
Then he is bent backwards like his wife, his mouth falls open, and the blankness comes over him once more.
Malfoy falls silent, ending the spell, and the illusory figures go dim, the life leaching from them until they are nothing more than shadows on the intricately patterned carpet, and then gone altogether. The skeletons in the chairs remain.
Harry blinks into the darkness. With trembling fingers, he lights his wand.
“What was that?” he asks. His voice is a rasp and his heart is pounding, though it’s only been a moment since Malfoy began his spell.
He looks over to see that Malfoy’s shoulders have slumped, and his pointed features are gone. He looks up, his eyes utterly expressionless for a moment.
“A spell of seeing, in a way,” he says. He tucks his wand away in his sleeves. “It only works with blood relatives. We’ve been working on it in the Department of Mysteries, but it isn’t released for general use yet…”
Harry can see why. The spell reminds him powerfully of the Resurrection Stone, in a way that curdles his stomach and makes him want to flee from the power that created that vision. He forces himself to move forward. He reaches out, then stops, hand hovering above Malfoy’s bent shoulders.
“I conjured their last moments,” Malfoy finishes. “I couldn’t show what killed them, but now we know for sure that they were murdered.”
Not quite. Harry’s lips twist unpleasantly. There is only one Magical Creature he can think of that grasps its victims so powerfully and which seeks only a kiss. Unfortunately, it causes nothing so painless as death.
His hand lands on Malfoy’s shoulder, and he twitches violently before leaning hesitantly into Harry’s grip.
“Let’s find the kitchen,” Harry says. “I think we both need some tea.”
CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO
Episode writer:
incandescentEpisode editor(s):
eustacia_vye28, llaeyro and wemyssWarnings/content: *horror imagery, UST, minor character death*
Episode summary: Harry receives a mysterious (and quite possibly cursed) note, and decides that this, like all good mysteries, must be investigated. Preferably with the help of one Draco Malfoy.
Tuesday, August 9, 2006
9:11am
The white parchment unfolds like a rose blooming in Harry’s hands, quickens like stop-motion movies of plants and then falls still, the spell that animated it spent.
The thorns lie within:
Case No. 08297. The Fifth Room, it reads.
Harry draws out his wand. “Reveal your secrets,” he says, imbuing his voice with the burr of magic. The spell is weak and nonspecific, but it should reveal something about whoever set the spell on the note without triggering any latent spells.
The magic tells him nothing. Harry looks up to find himself scowling and quickly corrects his face as Dawlish’s secretary glares back at him from the doorway of the Ministry of Magic’s Division for the Investigation of Cold Cases (DICC).
“Sorry, Parvati,” he says, smiling. “Are you sure you don’t know who gave you this note?”
She shrugs, dark hair brushing her shoulders. “Yeah. It was on my desk when I got in.”
Harry folds the note back down to its smallest size and looks over the outside of the parchment. He whispers a spell that sends it floating over the desktop between them. “It doesn’t have my name on it. Why did you give it to me?”
“It doesn’t?” Parvati walks forward and leans over his desk, peering at the parchment. Her robes are low and give Harry a clear view of her chest, though her breasts are small enough that there isn’t much to see. He tugs his gaze away just as her wide-set brown eyes look up. “I could have sworn it had your name on it. I’m sorry. I just knew it was for you as soon as I picked it up.” She reaches out. “I’ll take it back. The Head must know who it’s for.”
If Dawlish takes the note, Harry will never get it back. He pulls the paper close to his chest, and the parchment’s corner pricks at his throat. “That’s alright, Parvati,” he says. “If you felt the note was for me, you were probably right. I’ll look into it.”
Parvati draws back, wand in her hand. “Now that I think about it, Harry, I think it was spelled so that I’d give it to you. It’s probably cursed.” Her tone is calm, but the crease between her brows shows how concerned she is.
Harry nods and leans back in his chair. The seat creaks. “Possibly,” he says. “Knowing my luck, it’ll be a nasty curse, won’t it?” His smile is crooked.
Parvati sighs and sends him an exasperated look. “You shouldn’t have to deal with this,” she says, letting her wand fall to her side. “It’s been years. Can’t you just let it go?” She glances at the note once more, and her wand twitches as if she wants to summon the parchment from his grasp.
“Never,” he says. “I always need a new mystery.”
She laughs. “I hope you don’t end up in St. Mungos,” she says, half turning towards the door, and Harry almost laughs with her. That’s turning out to be a far too regular occurrence as well.
He smiles and nods. “Me too.”
Once Parvati has gone, though, the potential danger enclosed within the white parchment pinched between two fingers becomes more apparent. He lays the note carefully down on his desk and glances over to Malfoy’s.
It’s nearly bare, and what few supplies are set upon it are neatly organized and laid out at precise angles relative to the desk’s edges. Harry isn’t remotely surprised at Malfoy’s neatness, especially as he hardly uses the desk at all. He confines his experiments – and the mess that comes with them – to the back room of the offices that they share. Right now, Malfoy isn’t even in.
Harry would be interested to see what Malfoy makes of his little note. He could certainly spend another hour or more running tests on the note to find hidden spells, or even take the note across the Ministry and attempt to drag Hermione away from of her ceaseless research to take a look at it.
But asking Malfoy to cast a few spells will likely be quicker and more productive. Even if it means taking the note to Malfoy’s flat.
Harry stands suddenly and the chair screeches against the floor. He flicks his wand at the note and it flies up into the air, fluttering into his grasp as he moves. He slips between the two desks and walks out, hearing the office door lock itself behind him.
The hall outside the DICC is quiet, as usual, but just around the corner are the Head Auror’s office, and the buzz of noise that drifts down the corridor towards Harry draws him in, until he finds himself looking round the corner slowly and carefully.
The space outside the closed door to Dawlish’s office is packed, Ministry personnel taking up every bit of space; some obviously lingering in the hopes of getting in a quick word with the Head, and others just walking through, grumbling under their breath as they brush past unmoving shoulders. Overhead, paper aeroplanes swoop and soar with memos inscribed on their backs. Although Harry isn’t tall, he has to duck to avoid one as it veers through the space where his head was a second before.
Harry slides the parchment into the pocket inside his robes for safekeeping.
A door down the hall flies open and Ron strides through, face flushed almost as red as his hair. He stops dead as he nearly runs into the crowd. Harry watches, amused, as Ron glances around, his face quickly shifting from exasperation to happiness as he spots Harry and straightens.
He waves from across the room. “Can I get in?” he calls, gaze darting past to try and look in to the Head’s office.
“Not in,” Harry mouths, grimacing. Dawlish is almost never in the office so early in the day. They should all know that he thinks, glancing towards the other witches and wizards. A few trail gazes over him and at least one such sticks. He avoids their looks and works his way over to Ron.
“Wish I could keep that kind of schedule,” Ron mutters under his breath as Harry steps next to him. He steps out of the doorway and leans against the wall. “I’ve got to run this by him,” he says, waving a sheaf of parchments at Harry. He sees the glint of a Ministry seal, but little else.
“What are they?” Harry asks. The sheer variety of forms at the Ministry of Magic is staggering. Sorting through the scope of them had driven Hermione to exhaustion, and she’d once fallen asleep with her head laid on a stack of Modern Miscellany & Magical Machinery Registration (19A) forms.
“Warrants,” Ron says with dark relish in his voice. “There’s been a kidnapping.”
Harry turns, staring. “Who? What happened?” Since the War, kidnappings have been rare and whenever one is reported, it causes a stir in the entire Auror Department.
“You’re not on the case, so I can’t say, you know that.” Ron holds his smile back for a moment before bursting into a grin. “Okay, so listen to this: his name is Jacob Wilfing and he went out last—”
“Weasley!”
Ron jumps, nearly leaping away from the wall. Senior Auror Savage is standing in the doorway, all six feet of him looming with rank and superiority despite the rumpled state of his brown hair. He looks down his long nose at Ron and blinks his pale eyes slowly.
“Chatting, are we? Where are the warrants I need?” He pauses and glances down, letting his gaze linger. “Ah. Still in your hand, I see.”
“Dawlish isn’t in,” Ron fairly shouts. His flush climbs up into his hairline. “Head Auror Dawlish, I mean. Sir.”
Harry eyes his best friend. Savage has a serious reputation for being terrifying, and even as a trainee he and Ron had heard tales about how harsh he could be with his subordinates. They’d also heard that he was one of the best Aurors working in the Ministry and that he had an almost ninety-seven percent arrest rate. Harry doubts any of that has changed in the years since, but he and Ron have so much more experience; it’s mad that Ron’s still scared of the man, even now.
“Well.” Savage’s thin lips purse and Harry wonders, for a second, which is the man in charge: Dawlish or Savage. “We’ve had a new development. The warrants will have to wait. Meet me by the Floo.”
Ron nods. “Yes, sir,” he says, and glances at Harry apologetically. “Later,” he hisses, then shoves the parchments into his robes and strides out the door.
Savage lets him go and nods at Harry. “Auror,” he says, and sweeps out of the room.
Desire seethes in Harry. He wants to be working on this kidnapping. He misses the thrill of knowing that what he’s doing might make the difference between life and death; that there’s someone depending on the facts he’s chasing down. Cold cases bring their own rewards, but they’re undoubtedly less urgent. Maybe he could just head up, take the lift from Level Two towards the surface and catch Ron and Savage at the Floo. He wouldn’t even need to tell them he was there, simply listen carefully and ride the tails of their robes to the other side, spinning out and into the kidnapping along with them.
His heart pounds at the thought, but Harry knows it’s unrealistic. He’s already the chief of his own division; he should be happy with that.
He sighs and reaches into his robes, brushing his fingers against the note.
Parvati ‘just knew’ it was meant for him. There had to be a spell on it to send it his way, and it must be a particularly subtle and well-crafted one – Harry can’t feel the telltale charge of magic under his fingertips, and Parvati didn’t mention feeling anything either.
He pulls it out and unfolds it himself. The handwriting is spindly and slim - letters spiked and looped and written by a hand which had fairly skimmed the nib of its quill over the parchment and barely pressed at all, leaving some letters half unfinished.
Is it really cursed? He doesn’t feel any different yet, though the symptoms could be timed, or as subtle as the identification spell that must have been cast on it. It could be a simple note, but knowing Harry’s luck, what are the chances of that?
He’ll have to have it checked out, just to be sure it’s safe.
He shoves the note away and heads for the Floo. He has some investigating of his own to do.
//
9:54am
“Malfoy!”
Harry pounds at the door and tries to peer through the glass of the peephole.
“What?” Malfoy calls after a moment, from what sounds like right next to the other side of the door, and Harry smothers the urge to jump in surprise.
“It’s Harry Potter! Let me in, all right?”
The wards on Malfoy’s London flat are tight. Harry had tried to Floo in and been shunted three streets over to a crowded shop in Diagon Alley. Staggering through the startled shoppers and brushing ash from his robes had brought back memories of being twelve again, which hadn’t put him in a particularly good mood when he’d tried to Apparate in and found himself dumped on the doormat, bounced off the wards with his fingers and wrists and knees and toes feeling only tenuously attached.
“Malfoy, let me in!” he snaps, patience at its breaking point.
“Another case already?” Malfoy calls. “Because after last time, I’m not sure—”
“Yeah,” Harry says quickly. “New case. Very important. It’s a kidnapping, and—”
Malfoy yanks the door open and Harry, who’d been leaning against it, nearly falls inside.
“Thanks,” he says, turning his stumble into a step and walking in.
The windows of Malfoy’s flat are flung open to the city, and the sound of traffic floods in, slipping between the fluttering curtains. Harry strips his robes off as soon as he steps through the door and moves to roll up his shirtsleeves, but can’t find a place to lay his robe down. It’s close in here, crowded with summer heat and books.
There are books everywhere; crowded on the seats of Victorian-style armchairs, stacked underneath the mid-century coffee table, and overflowing from what appear to be several Ikea bookshelves. Books are lying opened beside crumb-covered plates and standing upright in the middle of the floor. Harry pauses and stoops, picking one up, glancing at the spine: Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration.
Ah. He gingerly puts the book down.
“Would you like to reorganise?” Malfoy asks, closing the front door and snapping the lock shut with a flick of his wand.
His neatly trimmed hair is darker than usual, touched with sweat, and there’s a flush on his cheeks. The sleeves of his white button-down are rolled with neatly pressed folds to his elbows and the top two buttons of his collar are undone. His trousers appear to be a light linen, with creases gathered at the hips from moving around. He looks harried, and Harry wonders what he’s interrupted. His thoughts flash back to that night in the bar, Malfoy’s hands all over Benjy Williams, his smile brilliant enough to catch Harry’s attention across the crowded room.
“You wanted me to look at a case?” Malfoy prompts, his tone insinuating that Harry must have forgotten his purpose in popping round.
Harry jolts and nods. “Not quite.” He pulls the note from his robes and holds it out. “This came to me this morning. I want to know if it’s cursed.”
Malfoy throws up his hands. “I’m not your errand boy, Potter. Check it yourself.”
“I’ve tried,” Harry says “Can’t find anything. And since you’re the Unspeakable, I figured I’d ask you to take a look.”
Malfoy laughs. “I haven’t heard much asking lately.”
Harry’s fingers clench around the note. “Will you take a look at this for me?” He pauses, and when Malfoy opens his mouth to say no, adds, “Please, Draco?”
Malfoy startles and flushes, pink rising to his cheeks. “Fine,” he snaps, and flicks his wand at the note. It drags itself from Harry’s grasp with a little flutter and rises up.
Harry steps back to let Malfoy work. He looks to one of the armchairs, but the books that have claimed it as their home don’t seem inclined to shift, so he leaves them be. He watches Malfoy as he works on the note, lips barely parted to let spells slip through them, the tip of his slim wand glowing with the constant flow of magic, and the space around the note flashing with colour as each spell scribes its coded answers in the air for Malfoy to read.
Finally, he falls silent, and the note turns white once more. Malfoy stretches out his hand and the note falls into it.
“It’s safe,” he says. “Except for the personalised directional spell – which is a handy piece of work – it’s free of magic.”
Harry nods and reaches out to take it back. “Thanks,” he says. “Good to know.” There is a heaviness within him that suggests that he had actually wished, somewhere buried deep, that it had been cursed, and that he would have to deal with everything that came along with that.
Malfoy pulls the note back. “Wait, wait,” he says. “I haven’t had a chance to take a look.” He unfolds the note, long fingers picking carefully at the folds, until it opens.
He reads the words quickly and then looks up, honest confusion in his eyes. “What case is this referring to? Do you think it refers to the Fifth Records Room in the Ministry?”
Harry shrugs. “Don’t know. I came straight to you. I figured I would check it out if I was still breathing by the time you’d checked for curses.” He pauses, then dares a smile. “Would you like to find out?”
Malfoy blinks at him, incredulous. “Potter, are you asking me out?” After a pause so short that, afterwards, Harry isn’t even sure he heard it, he adds, “On another case?”
Harry laughs, letting tension fall from his shoulders. “Yeah, something like that. What do you say?”
As he looks out the window, Malfoy’s hands fold the note back up again. “Okay,” he says. “It isn’t as if I have anything better to do today.” He pushes the note into Harry’s hand and summons his cloak, catching it neatly out of the air.
Harry pulls his own robes on as Malfoy rolls his shirtsleeves down and slips his robe on. He tucks the note safely away and holds out his arm.
“Shall we?” he asks.
Malfoy rolls his eyes. “When you’re ready, Potter.”
With an easy twist, Harry Apparates them to the Ministry.
//
10:20am
Black for murder, red for rape, purple for assault. Gold for theft and silver for treason. Blue for disappearances and kidnappings. Orange stripes to signify the use of magic. The darker the colour, the more severe the crime. The Records Rooms of the Ministry of Magic are more thoroughly organized than even Hermione could accomplish, given five years and an army of free elves, and Harry often wonders what manner of madman first conceived the system that currently fills the Rooms.
The First Room contains files for open cases. Rooms Two, Three, and Four contain closed cases. The Fifth Room – the last Room – holds cold cases. It reaches far back into the Ministry, its extended space far deeper than that of any of the other Rooms. Shelves of coloured file-jackets and boxes scroll on and on until they’re swallowed by the darkness where the light doesn’t reach.
Harry steps into the room and glances down at the note once more.
Case No. 08297. The Fifth Room.
He’s in the Fifth Room. Almost there.
Malfoy steps in behind him, head craned back to stare at the straining shelves above them. “Merlin,” he whispers. “This is going to take ages.”
There’s something about the Records Room that demands silence, as if all the parchment and crimes contained within them are another species of being, one that likes darkness and silence, and devours nothing more than the pleasant thoughts of those that dare to take a file down and read it. Little paper Dementors.
The thought makes Harry smile despite himself.
“We’re looking for oh-eight-two-nine-seven,” he whispers to Malfoy, stepping forward. “I think they start with zero on that end.” He points down the left-hand shelves. Malfoy eyes the stacks.
“You’d best be right,” Malfoy says, volume rising, then winces and clamps his lips shut.
Harry offers him a half-smile and points down one of the nearby aisles. Malfoy nods and raises his wand. The tip lights as he disappears, bobbing luminescence to show where he’s gone, and Harry heads for another aisle.
Lumos proves to be a poor way to search for a file when the shelves holding said files rise seven levels high, far above Harry’s head, and are labelled with numbers too small to read even up close. Harry squints at the first and discovers that, by some luck, he’s found the oh-eight-thousands.
He keeps walking, checking the numbers periodically, and when he feels he’s gotten close enough, tries to summon the file from the shelves above.
File 08297 is a slim, light blue folder containing just a few sheets of paper. It flutters downward off its shelf, falling with dubious coordination until Harry can snatch it out of the air. He turns to go after Malfoy, then pauses. The note was meant for him, after all. Maybe he should take a look first.
He crouches, tucking his lit wand behind his ear.
Harry stares at the file for a moment. It’s so thin. He lets his hand rest on top of it.
He opens the cover and reads the first few lines.
Case No. 08297
Disappearance -- Helena Malfoy, Age 18
Opened Nov. 8th, 1981 – Closed June 17th, 1988 (Unsolved)
00592A082FPW
Well, shit. He closes the folder and surges to his feet, striding down the aisle and catching his wand as it nearly slips from behind his ear. He shoves the folder under his arm and keeps moving.
“Malfoy!” he hisses as loud as he dares, rounding the corner.
Malfoy’s hair gleams in the dim light, far down the aisle. Cursing, Harry heads for him.
“Malfoy!” he hisses again, and this time Malfoy turns.
“Did you find it?” he asks.
“Yeah,” Harry says, and grabs him. “We have to go.”
Malfoy snaps immediately to alertness at Harry’s tone. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” Harry says. “Well, something, but nothing urgent.”
“So why are you dragging me out?” Malfoy’s tone rises wildly, but Harry doesn’t let him go. He can feel the pulse in Malfoy’s wrist, and his mind is swirling with the name Helena Malfoy, written in official Ministry script.
They reach the door of the Fifth Room and Harry shoves it open. As soon as they’re out, he glances up and down the deserted hallway and pulls Malfoy close, Disapparating.
Malfoy’s wards dump them on the doormat again.
“Fuck!” Harry curses under his breath.
Malfoy shoves him off. “Honestly,” he hisses, and opens the door.
When they’re both inside, Malfoy locks the door with both deadbolt and spell.
“All right,” he says, whirling on Harry, “what happened?”
Harry grimaces and runs his hand through his hair.
“Nothing. Really. We just couldn’t… Look, I thought it would be better to go through this in private.” He holds out 08297.
Malfoy’s brow furrows as he takes the pale blue file.
“Stealing from Records, are we?” He grimaces sourly. “I hope I won’t be implicated along with you.”
Harry laughs, relieved and forgetting, for one instant, the name. “You won’t be. Cross my heart.”
Malfoy sends him a look before turning away and flicking the file open. He freezes, breath stopping in his chest and his entire body stiffening. He turns back to Harry, eyes wide and unusually disarmed.
“Helena Malfoy,” he says wonderingly, tasting the name. “Someone is trying to get to us.”
“You know her, then?” The moment he’d seen the name Malfoy written on that file, he’d known that whoever had sent the note to Harry had known exactly who would be looking into 08297 – who would be foolish enough to take a mysterious file from the Ministry and look into it without Ministry approval. Now it just remains to see what kind of trap this is.
“Know her? She’s…” Malfoy pauses and waves the file, lips pursed. “She’s one of my cousins. I never knew her personally, she was so much older than I. But… I did see her once.” He looks back down to the file. “After she disappeared.”
Harry stills. He forces himself to stop thinking, to just listen to Malfoy for a moment.
“She disappeared in 1981,” Malfoy says, looking down, and Harry isn’t sure if he’s reading from the file or reciting from memory. “The First War was over, or practically so. She walked out of her house to visit friends one evening and never returned.” He stops and Harry can see that the fingers he’s curled loosely around the slim file are trembling.
Harry edges his way around a teetering pile of books and sits on the sofa. Malfoy follows his cue and sits beside him.
“I saw her in 1987,” he says. “Almost seven years after she disappeared. She was beautiful. Her hair wasn’t like mine – it was more golden.” His hand reaches up and then stops in an abortive motion. “We were walking in Diagon Alley. Helena was going the other way, and I knew her immediately. As soon as I saw her, it was as if a shock ran through me. Her portrait was in the Manor and her name is woven into the family tree. She was like a story come to life. I tried to get Father’s attention, but she was gone. Vanished as if she’d never been. Father and Mother didn’t really believe that I’d seen her, but took me to report it anyway. No one believed me. After a while I convinced myself that I’d been mistaken.”
He looks down at the photograph attached to the file. Helena Malfoy is pretty, but not beautiful. She turns to smile up at them from beyond the lens, cheeks pink from the snow swirling around her and a Slytherin scarf twisted tightly around her neck. She laughs, twisting to look at someone behind her, and then turns back to he and Malfoy. The loop begins again, and Harry pulls his gaze away; Wizarding photographs are still far too entrancing to him, even after all these years.
He looks to Malfoy instead. The file has badly unnerved him, shaken the perpetual confidence and ease that Malfoy projects. He wants to tell Malfoy that he didn’t imagine anything, that his memories are real, but he can’t be so trusting, not even now. He has a job to do, whether he’s been assigned the case or simply stumbled upon it.
“Were you mistaken?” he asks.
Malfoy’s eyes flash. “No.” He points at the photograph. “I knew this girl. She’s the woman I saw in Diagon Alley. She’s still alive, or she was then. And she’s still missing.” His voice turns soft at the last words.
Harry isn’t sure he believes Malfoy. It’s not that he thinks Malfoy is lying, but rather that… he knows memories can be flexible. Looking at the photograph, Malfoy seems so sure of Helena Malfoy’s identity, but Harry suspects that half an hour ago he would have been hard-pressed to recall her name.
“What do you think happened to her?” he asks.
Malfoy leans back and fingers the folder. He shakes his head after a moment. “Anything. It’s… not unknown for Malfoys to leave the family, for many reasons. We are not always easy to live with.” His gaze flicks up to Harry and then away.
Harry stands abruptly. “Someone sent that note to me. Someone sent us - sent us - to that file. I want to know why.” He stops as Malfoy looks up at him. “And that means we have to find Helena Malfoy.”
“She’s probably dead,” Malfoy says.
Harry nods. “Perhaps. But there’s a mystery here that I want to get to the bottom of. Something about this doesn’t feel right.” He can’t quite put his finger on it, but from the little that Malfoy has said and the glance Harry has had of the file, he can tell that there is much more to 08297 than it first appeared.
“So we’ll find her,” Malfoy says. His face is tight, eyes wide and staring. His brand of determination is so much more vicious than Harry’s.
Harry nods. “We’ll go back to the beginning. Talk to her family. Revisit everything. I have a feeling that it won’t take long for us to find something.”
Malfoy’s brow rises, amusement breaking through his fixation. “It’s been twenty-five years,” he says. “I think that if there was anything to be found, someone would have already found it.”
“We’ll find something. Trust me,” Harry says. “Just this once.”
That startles Malfoy into a laugh. Sunlight catches on the white of his hair, flashing. He narrows his eyes at Harry. “Trust you?” It sounds like the most unlikely proposition in the history of the world, coming from Malfoy’s lips.
“You’ve done it before,” Harry says, not a little defensively.
“So I have,” Malfoy says, smiling.
//
12:27pm
The wind whips Malfoy’s hair into his eyes and he reaches up to pull it back.
They’re on the last curve of the drive to the Derbyshire home of the Malfoy family – Chrysos Hall, he’s been informed – with sweat on their foreheads and robes thrown over their arms. Late summer is not a good time to be trekking down long drives simply because the edge of the anti-Apparation wards is almost a mile away.
The fact that they’ve gotten this far at all is unusual, so far as Harry’s concerned. He had assumed that the wards around that Malfoy’s family home would be intricate and entrenched, and would require direct permission to pass through. Yet only the Apparation wards are still in place, and he and Malfoy walked straight through the rest as if they were barely there, though they’ve seen neither hide nor hair of the Derbyshire Malfoys at all today.
They’ve just spent nearly two hours tracking down Helena’s parents, the last of the Derbyshire Malfoys. It seems that, almost fifty years ago, Septimus Malfoy had bought an old Muggle home out in the picturesque countryside of the Peak District, and had proceeded to spend several years and millions of galleons having the place stripped of its Muggle heritage and redone in high Wizarding style. It is Unplottable, and to the eyes of Muggles, appears as a ruined hall. This did nothing to make the house easier to locate and Apparate to, and by now, Harry’s patience is stretching thin. He wants to get inside Chrysos Hall and find the Malfoys so that he can begin asking questions.
“I don’t think you should talk,” Malfoy says.
Harry looks at him incredulously. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I’m an Auror, and—”
“And I’m just the consultant here?” He slides a sour look towards Harry. “The Unspeakable? The only person here certified in Cursebreaking and Wardcracking? I’m the heir to the Wiltshire Malfoys, and the last wizard to have seen Helena alive. I think I’m a bit more qualified to handle this situation.”
Malfoy strides away, leaving Harry to glower after him. He’ll let Malfoy talk, but he’s certainly not going to stay silent. He braces himself and then follows Malfoy, striding up the drive.
Chrysos Hall is enormous. It sits at the top of a steep hill, carved from pale stone and glinting gold filigree, four storeys tall and with hundreds of windows across its front, geometrically planned and precisely aligned. It is elegant and obviously quite old, and Harry is confronted once again with the Malfoy’s wealth. Not that he’d forgotten, but the particular Malfoy he chooses to spend time with does a good job of downplaying the obscene amount of gold he has access to.
The Hall grows only larger as they approach, until its cool shadow falls over them and they’re forced to pull their robes on again. Malfoy fastens the buttons of his waistcoat and straightens, clearly readying himself for a visit with his family. As they approach the front door, Harry straightens his tie.
“State your name,” the doorknocker gravely intones as they come to a halt. Its metal face drips down the door, chinning wagging.
Somehow, all traces of exertion have left Malfoy, and he looks as collected and calm as if he Apparated in just feet away.
“Draco Malfoy,” Malfoy says. And then, as Harry opens his mouth, he adds, “And guest.”
Harry snaps his mouth shut, teeth grinding, and forces a smile. Patience, he reminds himself. The doorknocker’s lined face stills for a moment, then shifts to life once more. “Be welcome,” it says, and the door groans open onto darkness.
They step inside, and the door shuts quietly behind them. The entrance hall is dim. Webs crowd the corners, and the only light comes from windows set high in the walls, which falls to the dusty floor and sends patterns across the bottom of their robes. Harry reaches into his robe for his wand, suddenly uneasy.
“Something is wrong,” Malfoy says, and Harry nods in complete agreement. He brings out his wand and flicks it, sending a scanning spell out.
It sweeps through the room and nearby corridors before returning. “Nothing,” Harry says. “I can’t find any signs of life.”
Malfoy is already chanting his own spell under his breath. It sounds very much like Harry’s own detection spell, but with added clauses to specify something. As he tries to decipher the Latin, Malfoy finishes the spells with a sweep of his wand and Harry feels the magic sweep over him and away, through the myriad rooms of the house.
“Is that your spell?” he asks, as they wait for the results.
Malfoy nods. “I specified that it should search for members of my bloodline. It should tell me if there are any other Malfoys here. But it won’t…” He grimaces and shrugs. “There are certain kinks I haven’t been able to work out yet. I haven’t exactly tested this one extensively.”
The spell returns to Malfoy with a flash at the top of his wand, and he looks down at it sharply. “They’re here,” he says.
“Good,” Harry says, and before Malfoy can delay by running any more diagnostics, he walks towards the wide staircase in the centre of the cavernous entrance hall.
He pauses and turns on his heel. “Up?” he asks, tilting his head toward the stairs.
Back stiff, Malfoy walks over. “The bedrooms will be up there. I’m sure my family won’t be thrilled with the fact that you’re now intruding on their private spaces.”
Harry shrugs. “They should have come down to greet us, then.”
He starts upwards, the sound of his and Malfoy’s heels on the stairs is hollow.
The house is still and quiet. The wood of the staircase groans softly under his weight, and the only other sounds that Harry can make out are the rasp of Malfoy’s robes shifting and the infrasonic hum of magic.
At the top of the staircase, they split up, Malfoy heading down the hall to the left and Harry to the right. Wand out, Harry checks each room, finding a library with books left open on the desk, a sitting room with a dusty teacup and saucer still sitting out, a study that is immaculately clean except for the thick layer of dust over everything, and a bedroom that appears to have been unused for years. The sound of his steps is eerily muffled as he moves through each one.
Halfway down the long hall, the wall changes from a darkly-patterned and faded wallpaper to a thick, draped tapestry. Harry slows to a halt and uses his wand to lift a corner of the heavy fabric. It takes him a moment to realize why it seems so familiar.
It’s a Malfoy family tapestry. Generations of bloodlines are laid out in black and silver embroidery on a panelled green, names writ in small cramped script and connected by a thick grid of lines. This family tree must go back thousands of years.
Harry drops to a crouch, squinting as he looks for a name he recognizes. Many are dark and grayed, the witches and wizards they represented long dead. Down the bottom, some shine, glimmering with a faint light.
There. Draco Malfoy, Lucius and Narcissa; written in the very middle of the tapestry. Off to the side is the name Helena Malfoy, shining and vibrant. Harry reaches out to touch the tapestry, disarmed by the sight.
A flame flares up in front of his face and Harry jumps up, wand snapping up to cast a spell.
But the floating tongue of fire does nothing besides hover, flickering and dancing. Then it gutters and flares up again, and a voice issues from it.
“Potter,” Malfoy says through the communication spell, “come quickly. I’ve found them.” The spell has flattened his voice and turned it hollow, but Harry can still hear the concern in it.
He pulls back from the spell as it fades to a wisp and vanishes. He turns and heads down the hall towards Malfoy, steps quickened. After a moment, Malfoy steps out of a darkened doorway and beckons. Harry begins to run.
“What is it?” he asks, breaths coming harsh in his throat as he stops.
Malfoy scowls. “You’ll see.” He points into the open door of the room he’s just stepped out of with the glowing tip of his wand. “I think we’re a bit late for questions.”
Harry moves inside with his wand out. It appears to be a sitting room, very much like one down the hall, except that this one has a fireplace with ashes in it. A teacup lies on the wooden floor, shattered, and its saucer sits nearby. In the two chairs flanking the fireplace sit two bodies, obviously many years dead. They have rotted to mere bones and skin, though the robes that they once wore remain fairly intact. Yellow hair curls over the collar of one body, and a few strands of shorter grey hair cling to the rotted scalp of the other.
A man and a woman. “Is it Helena?” Harry asks.
Malfoy slides around him and leans close.
“No,” he says. “Do you see their rings?”
Harry peers at the bony hands, draped over the arms of their chairs. Each body has a heavy ring on its left hand, matching in design and engraving.
“Malfoy signet rings,” he says. “Given only through marriage. Helena wasn’t married. These must be her parents.” He pauses. “Septimus and Aurelia Malfoy.”
Harry frowns. “Her parents aren’t supposed to be dead,” he says. “The file lists them as alive.”
He flicks his wand, allowing his Lumos to die, and runs a few diagnostic spells. They bring back no answers, showing only that the Malfoys died a natural death. Yet this looks anything but. How could a prominent Wizarding couple vanish and be left to rot in their own home with no one noticing?
“Natural causes,” he says. “But that seems unlikely.”
“Extremely so,” Malfoy says, and lifts his own wand. He scowls for a long moment. “I might be able to find out more.”
He begins to speak an incantation, drawing out his words so that the Latin blurs together, intonation low and steady. Harry recognizes the sound of an invented spell and draws back slightly, not wanting to interfere in the least in whatever magic Malfoy is crafting.
As the spell continues, the bodies twitch. A soft palette of colour flares under the skin of their cheeks, then blossoms, spreading with a startling swiftness down their necks and under their clothes. Their flesh balloons outward, swelling with life, and their chests rise. They sit still for a moment as Harry stares, and Malfoy continues his magic.
Then they move, rising slowly from their seats. As they stand, their expressions shift from blank to terrified, muscles tightening and twitching with the abject fear they are experiencing.
“What have you—” Harry begins. Behind the risen figures he can see the bodies, still sitting lifeless in their armchairs, unchanged. The magic he sees now is just an illusion.
Septimus and Aurelia Malfoy reach up, clawing with artificially lifelike fingers at something invisible above them. Septimus manages to pull away for a second, pushing back whatever has him in its grasp and stares desperately past Harry, at the doorway. His mouth opens and closes and it looks like he’s shouting something.
Then he is bent backwards like his wife, his mouth falls open, and the blankness comes over him once more.
Malfoy falls silent, ending the spell, and the illusory figures go dim, the life leaching from them until they are nothing more than shadows on the intricately patterned carpet, and then gone altogether. The skeletons in the chairs remain.
Harry blinks into the darkness. With trembling fingers, he lights his wand.
“What was that?” he asks. His voice is a rasp and his heart is pounding, though it’s only been a moment since Malfoy began his spell.
He looks over to see that Malfoy’s shoulders have slumped, and his pointed features are gone. He looks up, his eyes utterly expressionless for a moment.
“A spell of seeing, in a way,” he says. He tucks his wand away in his sleeves. “It only works with blood relatives. We’ve been working on it in the Department of Mysteries, but it isn’t released for general use yet…”
Harry can see why. The spell reminds him powerfully of the Resurrection Stone, in a way that curdles his stomach and makes him want to flee from the power that created that vision. He forces himself to move forward. He reaches out, then stops, hand hovering above Malfoy’s bent shoulders.
“I conjured their last moments,” Malfoy finishes. “I couldn’t show what killed them, but now we know for sure that they were murdered.”
Not quite. Harry’s lips twist unpleasantly. There is only one Magical Creature he can think of that grasps its victims so powerfully and which seeks only a kiss. Unfortunately, it causes nothing so painless as death.
His hand lands on Malfoy’s shoulder, and he twitches violently before leaning hesitantly into Harry’s grip.
“Let’s find the kitchen,” Harry says. “I think we both need some tea.”
